By Andrew Bunting, PHS Vice President of Horticulture
Fifteen years ago, Nicole Juday started gardening around her 1890’s Queen Anne period home perched above Wissahickon Avenue and not far from Lincoln Drive in Germantown. Nicole, who recently authored Private Garden of Philadelphia has worked at some notable regional public garden institutions including The Barnes Arboretum, Wyck Historic House and Garden and PHS.
Her goal is to have “…as many flowers as possible for as much of the year.” Her garden is filled with both modern and old roses, tropical plants, flowers with fragrance, a myriad of dahlias which she grows for culflowers and she enjoys growing challenging or hard-to-grow plants. She also over winters many plants on a sunny porch and then brings them into the garden for a summer display, including orchids, citrus, tropical ferns, an olive and a bay rum tree.
Nicole hails from Illinois where she grew up on a farm. Early on she was influenced by her mother’s large vegetable garden. When she arrived in Philadelphia for graduate school she had no formal horticultural training. In her youth she had never visited a public garden. Shortly after her arrival she visited The Morris Arboretum and Gardens in Chestnut Hill and this visit was transformational for Nicole. After that visit she “wanted to learn how to garden” and began her gardening journey where she started to learn how to garden.
